One of the first demands by a top council of China’s Communist Party since Xi Jinping became leader late last month, is for a ban on the lavish and expensive public displays of pomp and circumstance by party officials.

The opulent ceremonials arranged for senior officials to mark even the most minor occasions — complete with bused-in crowds, sickeningly cute flower girls, lines of young women wearing figure-hugging cheongsam dresses, and throngs of fawning courtiers — have become an object of public contempt.

In the minds of many, the red carpets and royal progressions by officials are gross public reminders of the vast private fortunes accumulated corruptly by senior party members and their families.

In an unusually blunt acceptance speech last month, Xi, who after taking over the party leadership will be appointed China’s president early next year, pointed directly at the danger the overblown imperial style adopted by many top officials presents to the survival of Communist Party rule.

“In recent years, as a result of the accumulation of problems, a number of countries have experienced popular anger, street protests, social unrest, and regime collapse. Corruption was among the most important of the reasons,” Xi said.

Tuesday’s statement by the 25-member Politburo demanding an end to pomp and empty ceremony is very much in line with the central theme of several of Xi’s recent speeches that every effort must be made to curb corruption by party officials.

Even the wording of the statement echoes Xi’s curt no-nonsense style.

While first assessed to be little more than a product of the stultifying meritocratic and consensus process by which Chinese leaders have been selected in the last 30 years, Xi is already emerging as an assertive and bold character.

A large and self-confident man, Xi may well come to personify an increasingly self-confident China and stand in sharp contrast to outgoing party boss and president, Hu Jintao, whose public persona brings new depth of meaning and nuance to the word grey.

As well as demanding an end to the showy ceremonies and lavish banquets that decorate officials’ daily lives, the Politburo statement turns thumbs down on “empty talk,” long and turgid speeches, and pointless reporting by state media of these essentially meaningless events.

“The style of officials, particularly top officials, has an important impact upon the style of the party and the style of the government and even on the whole of society,” said the statement. “If you want people to do something, then do it yourself first.”

That sounds very much like Xi, or at least how Xi now is being portrayed in state media.

When he was deputy mayor of the southern port city of Xiamen in the late 1980s, we are told, Xi lived in a public dormitory, washed his own clothes, and ate in a public canteen.

Tuesday’s Politburo recommendations go for approval to the inner sanctum of power in China, the seven-member Politburo Standing Committee.

It is here that Xi must make his mark as China’s leader, and for the moment the makeup of the committee works in his favour.

To resolve the turmoil in the upper reaches of the party in the last few months of the selection process for the new leadership, retired president and party general-secretary Jiang Zemin stepped in to restore calm.

Jiang is the elder statesmen of what is called the Shanghai Faction, and Xi is one of his proteges.

Jiang engineered the process so that five of the seven Standing Committee members are from his faction, and therefore loyal to Xi.

The other two are Li Keqiang, who will be appointed prime minister next year, and propaganda department head Liu Yunshan.

They are both associated with outgoing leader Hu, who mentored a whole generation of young officials when he headed the Communist Youth League.

It is hard to draw clear differences in policy or approach between the Shanghai Faction and the Youth League clique. There is no obvious left-right division between the two.

But there is an assumption, whether valid or not, that the proteges will follow the lines of their mentors.

As president, Jiang promoted the opening up of the economy and development of a private sector.

Hu, in contrast, has overseen a return to economic dominance of state-controlled companies and the purposeful throttling of private enterprise.

But the gift to Xi of a largely supportive Standing Committee has a firm time limit.

All the members except Xi and Premier Li reach mandatory retirement age by the time of the next leadership review in 2017.

Younger party members born in the 1950s and 1960s with links to the Youth League dominate in the Politburo and make up about 80 per cent of the 205 full members of the Central Committee from which Politburo members are drawn.

So Xi, if he wants or is allowed a second five-year term, must establish his leadership authority quickly or it may slip through his hands.

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